The cultural context of business activity is a time-honoured theme in the study of economic and social history. A vast and varied literature on this subject has emerged, ranging from the celebrated essay published by Max Weber in 1905 on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism to R. H. Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926) and to more recent sociological explorations of attitudes to entrepreneurship and profit-making. Most such works are concerned with general perceptions of wealth and the wealthy rather than with the ways businessmen themselves have reflected on their careers and their place in society. But recently there has been an upsurge in interest in business history, in part stimulated by the publication of a number of widely respected histories of firms, such as Donald Coleman's three-volume account of Courtaulds, or of biographies of men of wealth, such as Gerson Bleichröder, Bismarck's banker and confidant. As a result, it has become possible to broaden our understanding both of the process of wealth-creation and of the multiple meanings given to it by different generations in different societies.

Even a cursory glance at a fraction of the writings of critics and defenders of businessmen in the past century and a half of English (let alone European) history will suffice to warn the reader against any single interpretation of attitudes to entrepreneurship and commerce.And yet one historian recently has had the courage to cut through theknot of scholarly caution to offer a distinctive reading of English cultural history with respect to business activity.